| archbrix said: Switch is only 73,000 units behind 2019. I think week 20 is Zelda week; wouldn't surprise me to see 2023 catch up to 2019 sales that week. I'm still predicting close to 4m for Switch this year in Japan, since I believe there will be more games coming - including a brand new Mario game. |
I was thinking Switch would do 3.8-4 million this year, but I'm gonna downgrade my prediction to 3.6m now. Unless a price cut or something happens this year, and well a price cut absolutely SHOULD happen but I'd be surprised if it actually does happen, then I don't think it'll do over 3.6m. I agree their better be a 2D Mario game coming for the holidays since Switch hasn't gotten one yet, and it'd absolutely be a 15m-20m seller even coming out at the end of the Switch's life, but as we saw with Pokemon last holiday even that isn't gonna boost HW sales much, just SW sales.
3.6m will put Switch less than 1.7m from DS's record by end of year. Even if successor launches mid-to-late Spring next year (presuming a January next-gen announcement) Switch I think should still be able to do 1.7m next year and pass the DS. Though it is going to need a price cut before next-gen because otherwise next-gen system will likely come out at same price point as the OLED, and assuming backwards compatibility (because it'd be insane if it didn't have it) that would completely cut off Switch sales when the successor launches except for maybe a few Lite sales since that is a cheaper price point. So if Switch and OLED don't drop to at least $250/$300 ($230/$280 would be better) it seems like successor would immediately kill off >90% of Switch sales and it wouldn't pass the DS in Japan. But maybe their strategy will be to just stop Switch production other than Lite perhaps on next-gen launch day so that people focus on the successor, and they just let the last few hundred thousand hybrid and OLED models gradually sell out on shelves, cuz its not like they care about it passing the DS's record anyway.
